My Little Pony Build-a-Bear: When Good Manes Go Bad (or: how to fix a terribly messed up mane)

The original My Little Pony Build-a-Bear mane styling post is actually one of the most popular posts on my website, and because of that, I’ve had a number of people asking what to do if their pony’s mane is so horribly tangled that the only option seems to be to give said pony a little haircut. Well, before you go that route, take a look at this little tutorial on how to fix up an extremely messed up mane.

As you can tell, I tend to snuggle Scootaloo a lot. (Don’t judge. Sometimes people just need to hug a pony.) And as a result, her mane is a nasty, tangled mess, and so is her tail. So, I grabbed my comb, took a deep breath, and got to work.

I started with the small stuff first.

I figured I’d tackle her tail first, as it’s small – and what I did was soak her tail with wig detangler and try and work the knots out with my fingers. It was slow work, but that’s the best way to get out the worst of the tangles. Once I worked out the major knots, I took the comb to her tail and worked the rest of the tangles out. If I hit a nasty snag, I’d just go back and work with it by hand for a little bit, then comb some more.

Oooh, progress.

Here you can see her neat and detangled hair (and her messy mane). I will warn you now – if you’re expecting your pony’s mane to look as perfect as it did when you brought her home, this isn’t going to re-create the Build-a-Bear Perfect Hair. This will, however, get the worst of the knots out, smooth your pony’s hair, and get it to a point where you can follow the tutorials I posted last year.

Before I went any further, I clipped Scootaloo’s tail into a little twirl, to keep it from flopping around and getting re-tangled. You could also use a ponytail holder to do the same thing, or even use a paperclip to keep it all clipped together… But yeah, in order to keep from ruining all your hard work thus far, you may want to clip or otherwise secure your pony’s tail.

Gaaaaaah.

Next up: the mane. And you can see how much of a mess it is, too. I soaked that sucker in wig detangler and set to work easing out the knots. It took a while – maybe close to an hour, but bit by bit I got it done. It’s the same process as with the tail, but with the mane you’ll want to split it into smaller sections so you can focus on one spot at a time. Eventually I got it so I could mostly run a comb through the whole thing, and after easing a couple more knots out I deemed miss Scootaloo done.

Much better than earlier!

Ohh, that is so much better. It almost looks like she just came from the store – although I know better, haha. She’s not perfect, though, the ends of her hair are a little frizzy and fluffy…

And from the front!

Here you can see just how fluffy it is at the ends – it’s not bad, but still, not shiny-new-perfect-mane. However! This should hopefully help you avoid needing to take scissors to your pony’s mane.

I did have one casualty, though…

…yeah, I may have broken a tooth off the comb and bent some others. And this was brand new, fresh out of the package. Oops! Anyhow, I hope this helps you rescue your pony’s mane from its disastrous ‘do!

4 Responses to My Little Pony Build-a-Bear: When Good Manes Go Bad (or: how to fix a terribly messed up mane)

Thanks for this! I tried the fabric softener to water combo Pinterest promised would work and it did not work… I will try this next. Unfortunately I just spent an hour combing out my daughter’s ponies with a metal toothed pet brush, so they have no tangles, but a little less hair.

One question – how do you “soak” the hair in the detangler? Do you actually pour the detangler out into a bowl and soak it that way, or just really dampen the hair and then let it sit for a bit?

I spray in quite a bit of wig detangler, so much so that it’s pretty wet to the touch, and then I work it through with my fingers to try and loosen up the worst of the tangles. Hope you have better luck with the wig detangler!